Focused Electron Beam Induced Deposition (FEBID) is a promising direct deposition technique for nanofabrication. FEBID is capable of producing free-standing 3D structures of sub-10 nm size. However, this technique faces challenges regarding purity and spatial resolution of the deposits as well as deposition speed. In Europe, the FEBID research landscape has thus joined forces within COST Action CM1301 – CELINA- to understand the fundamental chemistry behind FEBID and use this knowledge to develop superior precursor molecules and FEBID processes. The first part of this contribution will shortly introduce the work of CELINA.<br/>In the second part we show that desorption experiments in ultrahigh vacuum are a valuable approach to gain insight into the fundamental chemical reactions underlying FEBID and discuss this on two examples. Desorption methods were used to study the electron-induced fragmentation behavior of typical FEBID precursor ligands. It has also enabled mechanistic insights into a previously discovered efficient deposit purification process based on water as a purification reagent.<br/>The third part presents different FEBID experiments conducted with condensed precursor materials. Such thick precursor layers offer the advantage that deposition rates can be orders of magnitude higher than in the established gas-phase FEBID processes. The low-volatility platinum complex cisplatin has been selected as a potential FEBID precursor because its ligand architecture bears the promise of being removed facilely by an electron beam. Additionally we emphasize the possibility to use ionic compounds for FEBID in condensed layers. This is achieved using ion soft landing of ionic species of known composition, charge state and kinetic energy. We demonstrate that soft-landing of mass-selected anions produces self assembling liquid films composed of ions and adventitious neutral molecules. A focused electron beam generates well-defined µm-sized structures in these films.

From fundamental electron-induced chemistry to novel unconventional FEBID precursor materials

253rd National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.